Social Media and the UK Riots: “Twitter Mobs”, “Facebook Mobs”,
“Blackberry Mobs” and the Structural Violence of Neoliberalism
A blog post on the role of social media in the UK riots by Christian Fuchs
“One formula [...] can be that of the mob: gullible, fickle, herdlike,
low in taste and habit. [...] If [...] our purpsoe is manipulation – the
persuasion of a large number of people to act, feel, think, known in
certain ways – the convenient formula will be that of the masses”. —
Raymond Williams
“What is true of London, is true of Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, is
true of all great towns. Everywhere barbarous indifference, hard egotism
on one hand, and nameless misery on the other, everywhere social
warfare, every man’s house in a state of siege, everywhere reciprocal
plundering under the protection of the law, and all so shameless, so
openly avowed that one shrinks before the consequences of our social
state as they manifest themselves here undisguised, and can only wonder
that the whole crazy fabric still hangs together”. This passage could be
a description of the social conditions in the United Kingdom today. It
is, however, a passage from Friedrich Engels’ report about the “Working
Class in England”, published in 1845.
In his book “Folk Devils and Moral Panics, first published in 1972,
Stanley Cohen shows how public discourse tends to blame media and
popular culture for triggering, causing or stimulating violence. “There
is a long history of moral panics about the alleged harmful effects of
exposure to popular media and cultural forms – comics and cartoons,
popular theatre, cinema, rock music, video nasties, computer games,
internet porn” – and, one should add today, social media. “For
conservatives, the media glamorize crime, trivialize public insecurities
and undermine moral authority; for liberals the media exaggerate the
risks of crime and whip up moral panics to vindicate an unjust and
authoritarian crime control policy” (Cohen, Stanley. 1972/2002. Folk
devils and moral panics. Oxon: Routledge. Third edition. page xvii).
The shooting of Mark Duggan by the London police on August 4th 2011 in
Tottenham triggered riots in London areas such as Tottenham, Wood Green,
Enfield Town, Ponders End, Brixton, Walthamstow, Walthamstow Central,
Chingford Mount, Hackney, Croydon, Ealing and in other UK areas such as
Toxteth (Liverpool), Handsworth (Birmingham), St. Ann’s (Nottingham),
West Bromwich, Wolverhampton, Salford, or Central Manchester.
Parts of the mass media started blaming social media for being the cause
of the violence. The Sun reported on August 8th: “Rioting thugs use
Twitter to boost their numbers in thieving store raids. [...] THUGS used
social network Twitter to orchestrate the Tottenham violence and incite
others to join in as they sent messages urging: ’Roll up and loot’“.
The Telegraph wrote on the same day: “How technology fuelled Britain’s
first 21st century riot. The Tottenham riots were orchestrated by
teenage gang members, who used the latest mobile phone technology to
incite and film the looting and violence. Gang members used Blackberry
smart-phones designed as a communications tool for high-flying
executives to organise the mayhem”. The Daily Mail wrote on August 7th
that there are “fears that violence was fanned by Twitter as picture of
burning police car was re-tweeted more than 100 times”.
Even the BBC took up the social media panic discourse on August 9th and
reported about the power of social media to bring together not only
five, but 200 people for forming a rioting “mob”. Media and politicians
created the impression that the riots were orchestrated by “Twitter
mobs” and “Blackberry mobs”.
And also, as usual in moral panics, the call for policing technology
could be heard. The Daily Express (August 10th, 2011) wrote: ”Thugs and
looters are thought to have sent messages via the BlackBerry Messenger
(BBM) service to other troublemakers, alerting them to riot scenes and
inciting further violence. Technology writer Mike Butcher said it was
unbelievable the service had not already been shut down. He said:
’Mobile phones have become weaponised. It’s like text messaging with
steroids – you can send messages to hundreds of people that cannot be
traced back to you.’ Tottenham MP David Lammy appealed for BlackBerry to
suspend the service“. The police published pictures of rioters recorded
by CCTV and asked the public to identify the people. The mass media
published these pictures. The Sun called for “naming and shaming a
rioter” and for “shopping a moron”. The mass media also reported about
citizens, who self-organized over social media in order to gather in
affected neighbourhoods for cleaning the streets.
Blaming technology or popular culture for violence – the Daily Mirror
blamed “the pernicious culture of hatred around rap music, which
glorifies violence and loathing of authority (especially the police but
including parents), exalts trashy materialism and raves about drugs“ for
the riots – is an old and typical ideology that avoids engaging with the
real societal causes of riots and unrest and promises easy solutions:
policing, control of technology, surveillance. It neglects the
structural causes of riots and how violence is built into contemporary
societies. Focusing on technology (as cause of or solution for riots) is
the ideological search for control, simplicity and predictability in a
situation of high complexity, unpredictability and uncertainty. It is
also an expression of fear. It projects society’s guilt and shame into
objects. Explanations are not sought in complex social relations, but in
the fetishism of things. Social media and technology-centrism, both in
its optimistic form (“social media will help our communities to overcome
the riots”, “social media and mobile phones should be surveilled by the
police”, “Blackberrys should be forbidden”, “more CCTV surveillance is
needed”, “CCTV will help us find and imprison all rioters”) and its
pessimistic form (“social media triggered, caused, stimulated, boosted,
orchestrated, organized or fanned violence”), is a techno-deterministic
ideology that subsitutes thinking about society by the focus on
technology. Societal problems are reduced to the level of technology.
Let’s talk about the society, in which these riots have taken place. Is
it really a surprise that riots emerged in the UK, a country with high
socio-economic inequality and youth unemployment, in a situation of
global economic crisis? The United Kingdom has a high level of income
inequality, its Gini level was 32.4 in 2009 (0 means absolute equality,
100 absolute inequality), a level that is only topped by a few countries
in Europe and that is comparable to the level of Greece (33.1) (data
source: Eurostat). 17.3% of the UK population had a risk of living in
poverty in 2009 (data source: Eurostat). In early 2011, the youth
unemployment rate in the UK rose to 20.3%, the highest level since these
statistics started being recorded in 1992.
The UK is not only one of the most advanced developed countries today in
economic temrs, it is at the same time a developing country in social
terms with a lot of structurally deprived areas. Is it a surprise that
riots erupted especially in East London, the West Midlands and Greater
Manchester? The UK Department of Communities and Local Government
reported in its analysis “The English Indices of Deprivation 2010”:
“Liverpool, Middlesbrough, Manchester, Knowsley, the City of
Kingston-upon Hull, Hackney and Tower Hamlets are the local authorities
with the highest proportion of LSOAs amongst the most deprived in
England. [...] The north east quarter of London, particularly Newham,
Hackney and Tower Hamlets continue to exhibit very high levels of
deprivation“ (pages 1, 3). Decades of UK capitalist development shaped
by deindustrialization and neoliberalism have had effects on the
creation, intensification and extension of precariousness and deprivation.
Calls for more police, surveillance, crowd control and the blames of
popular culture and social media are helpless. It is too late once riots
erupt. One should not blame social media or popular culture, but the
violent conditions of society for the UK riots. The mass media’s and
politics’ focus on surveillance, law and order politics and the
condemnation of social media will not solve the problems. A serious
discussion about class, inequality and racism is needed, which also
requires a change of policy regimes. The UK riots are not a “Blackberry
mob”, not a “Facebook mob” and not a “Twitter mob”; they are the effects
of the structure violence of neoliberalism. Capitalism, crisis and class
are the main contexts of unrests, uproars and social media today.
--
Prof. Christian Fuchs
Chair in Media and Communication Studies
Department of Informatics and Media
Uppsala University
Kyrkogårdsgatan 10
Box 513
751 20 Uppsala
Sweden
christian.fuchs at im.uu.se
Tel +46 (0) 18 471 1019
http://fuchs.uti.athttp://www.im.uu.se
NetPolitics Blog: http://fuchs.uti.at/blog
Editor of tripleC: http://www.triple-c.se
Book "Foundations of Critical Media and Information Studies" (Routledge
2011)
Book "Internet and Society" (Paperback, Routledge 2010)